


In The Bleak Midwinter

by Aloysia_Virgata



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Adopted Children, Gen, Post-Colonization (X-Files)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-20 23:39:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4806551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aloysia_Virgata/pseuds/Aloysia_Virgata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scully found she didn’t miss civilization much and it appalled her, the not missing it</p>
            </blockquote>





	In The Bleak Midwinter

**Author's Note:**

> Written for leiascully ‘s writing challenge. This took me an hour to write, and is unedited and unbeta-ed, as per instructions. It is post-col, which I have never really done before. but the “hot and cold” prompt made me think of Robert Frost’s Fire and Ice.

The sky had been torn open. It was red and black, it was searing to look at, like an infected wound. Then, when the colonists left, it seemed to have been patched back together with vast seams of smoke and snow clouds. 

It was cold all the time, cold everywhere, and dishwater sunlight struggled through the dense grey blanket. The global population was estimated to be, at maximum, around 11% of pre-colonial numbers. There were lots of bodies and the cold kept them (well, the pieces of them, really) around longer than was decent. People ignored them after a time, then casually looted them.

Scully found she didn’t miss civilization much and it appalled her, the not missing it. Here she thought she’d needed those one way arrows in the Target parking lot, Post-It notes and Diet Coke. But she didn’t after all. It was Mulder who missed order, who looked furtive when she went through the houses of the dead.

They’d found Silas in the early days, half-frozen under his mother’s arm and most of her torso out on Constitution Avenue. He was limp when Mulder scooped him up, scraped away the bloody slush from his eyes and his hair. Scully wasn’t sure he’d keep his fingertips. The toddler whimpered when they went into the National Academy of Sciences for triage. Snow had drifted in through the broken windows, but it was still better than the streets. Mulder tucked the child under his own clothes and coat, warming his frighteningly chilled body skin to skin. Scully lit a fire on a conference table, prayed to a god she no longer believed in.

***

Silas was clearing the table, tall and capable at seven. His parents helped people and Silas helped them. So when the convulsing woman staggered through the door he didn’t panic. Not even when she fell to the floor, twitching and screaming. Her belly was huge and Silas knew that meant a baby. He’d been around for quite a lot of babies. His dad was out deer hunting, so he yelled for his mother and put water on to boil, to sterilize her tools.

Scully came running in and fell to her knees when she saw the woman. “Oh, Jesus,” she whispered. The woman’s eyes rolled as she flopped on the floor, her hair soaked with sweat and matted. “She’s burning up,” Scully said. Foamy saliva began to dribble from the woman’s slack mouth.

Steam began to fill the small kitchen and Silas hurried to the stove, putting instruments into the pot. His mother had pulled her sweater off and rolled her sleeves up, and he saw that she was sweating too.

“Is the baby coming, mom?”

“Bring me a scalpel and then go get a whole lot of towels. This woman is dying, Silas. I have to cut the baby out and there’s going to be a lot of blood.”

He brought her the pot, burning his hand a little when the water sloshed. On the floor, the woman had gone still. Silas crouched next to her and felt the heat coming off her skin. He could smell the sickness on her, shimmering in the humid air.

His mother seemed to have forgotten him and so he stayed still and quiet as she ripped the woman’s dirty dress off.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, and cut the woman from below her breasts to the top of her dirty underpants. Silas gaped, felt warm blood spatter his face. The woman didn’t scream, or even move. His mother was teary but looked determined as she went through layers of tissue. She put her hands in the woman’s body, the smell of hot blood filling Silas’s nose.

After an interminable time, she lifted out a baby. It wriggled and screamed, and relief flooded Silas. “A girl,” his mother said, and slumped against the cabinet. Silas stepped over the dark pool of blood and clamped the cord.

They cleaned the baby and didn’t talk about the dead woman on the floor. Silas had seen a lot of dead bodies.

“Let’s name her Vivian,” he suggested.

“From ‘vivus,’” his mother murmured. “Alive.”

Mulder opened the door then and they saw the deer steaming on his sled. The dogs whined at the smell of blood and death in the kitchen.

“Dad,” said Silas, holding the bundle out proudly. “I have a sister now.”


End file.
